MOVING TOWARD PEACE : Israeli Arabs, Jews Calmly Greet Pact : Negotiations: Breakthrough welcomed with neither the exultation nor conflicting emotions of previous deals.

In Mahane Yehuda, this city’s open-air market, David Shweka and Adel Awadtallah agreed on one thing Monday as they watched Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein shake hands at the White House--they are ready for Israel and Jordan to make peace.

“If there is peace, and they open the border, I am going to visit immediately,” said Awadtallah, 24, an Israeli Arab living in mostly Arab East Jerusalem and working in a West Jerusalem restaurant. “It must be a real peace; we need a real peace.”

Shweka, 44, an Israeli army veteran who owns the electrical shop where the two watched the White House ceremonies, observed: “There has been a quiet peace between Israel and Jordan for years already. But this is good. When there is formal peace, for sure I will drive to Amman to visit.”

Israelis, usually divided on almost every issue, found themselves unusually unanimous in welcoming the breakthrough between Israel and Jordan that U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher has said could yield a formal peace treaty within months.

Across the political spectrum, Hussein’s first public get-together with Rabin was welcomed for bringing into the open relations that have long been conducted in secret between the two nations, nominal enemies for 46 years.

But there was none of the sense of exultation that gripped the nation when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat flew here in 1977 to offer peace. Neither was there the powerful conflict of emotions Israelis experienced as they watched Rabin shake hands on the White House lawn in September with Yasser Arafat, the Palestine Liberation Organization chairman who has been reviled here for decades as a bloodthirsty terrorist.

On Monday, in the Gulf of Aqaba--split down the middle between Israel and Jordan--17 yachts and other sailboats staged a peace sail from the Israeli port of Eilat. Some of the Israeli boats even sailed past the mid-water demarcation line into Jordanian waters before turning back.

For Israelis, the open meeting between Hussein and Rabin in Washington was another milestone on Israel’s road to acceptance by its neighbors, a move met largely with expressions of satisfaction and of restrained respect for Hussein.

“We cannot forget Hussein’s last mistake, siding with Iraq in the Gulf War,” Shweka said. “But still, there is something to be said for someone who has survived in power for more than 40 years.”

Polls have shown broad support for peace with Jordan, although Israelis have expressed reservations about making territorial concessions to Jordan or sharing water with it. Jordanians claim more than 140 square miles of desert in the Jordan Valley and say Israel must allow them a larger share of waters from the Yarmuk and Jordan rivers.

In a poll published Friday by the respected Dahaf organization, 52% of Israelis said they favor making territorial concessions to Jordan; 43% said they opposed them.

But even the opposition Likud bloc, which vehemently opposed the government agreement with the PLO on limited self-rule for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank town of Jericho, endorsed the talks with Jordan.

Officials of the ruling Labor Party acknowledge that the White House ceremonies were probably the most popular move this center-left government has made.

“For years, people told Labor: You can’t make peace, only the Likud can,” said Avraham Burg, a Labor Party Parliament member. “We love this. The situation now looks wonderful. The Syrians are around the corner, the Palestinians are in the pocket and now the Jordanians are out of the closet.”

Boaz Tzidkiyahu, 33, a pickle salesman at Jerusalem’s central market, said Israel’s agreement with the PLO worries him deeply. But peace with Jordan is a different matter, the Likud supporter said.

“This meeting between Hussein and Rabin is less exciting than the whole peace process and less frightening,” Tzidkiyahu said. “I think that it will succeed.”

For Uzi Narkiss, Hussein and Rabin’s handshake was particularly sweet. Narkiss, 69, led Israel’s army to capture East Jerusalem from the Jordanian army in the June, 1967, Middle East War. He has waited ever since for Jordan and Israel to make peace.

“I fought against the Arab Legion in 1948 and the Jordanian Army in 1967,” he said in an interview Monday in his Jerusalem apartment. “The Jordanians, in my opinion, were the best army in the Middle East. The fact that now they are signing an agreement with Israel means a lot to me.”

In 1948, Narkiss commanded Israeli forces at Gush Etzion that fell to what was then the Arab Legion--Jordan’s British-led army. He speaks respectfully of the discipline Jordanian soldiers showed as they overran the Israelis’ last positions.

“An agreement with Jordan is much more reliable than an agreement with the Palestinians,” he said. “The Jordanians are an establishment, and the Palestinians are not. You can count on the Jordanians, that they will keep their promise.”